“Jenna?" It was the lady from the voicemails I hadn’t been returning for weeks.

“This is Jenna.”

“Jenna, it’s Tammy, your dad’s girlfriend.” My dad, she means Johnathan. I hate when people call him my dad. At best he’s a shitty excuse for a father figure. What does she keep calling me for? I hadn’t seen or heard from him in over ten years.

“Oh, hi Tammy. Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you, I’ve just been really busy,” busy avoiding her. “How’s it going?”

“Not too well, Jenna.Your dad,” her voice cracks for a moment and instantly sews itself back together. “He’s not doing too well.”

“What’s going on?” I try to sound concerned but it comes out flat.

Kidney problems. She explains the last two years in terms of diagnoses and doctors appointments. I don’t feel anything; I imagine this was the way Johnathan felt the first time he saw me. He was staring back at me from across a table of lawyers. My mom had dragged me to some court hearing with her. I don’t remember much about that day, just that there was a round table and this guy with pompous eyes looking my way trying to decide if he felt anything, wondering why he didn’t.

When we left, I asked my mom who he was. She simply answered, “That was your dad.”

I thought I would have recognized him, felt his presence or something. I thought his voice might be hardwired in my brain somewhere. I tried to recall what it sounded like the Father’s Day my mom made me call him. I was uncomfortable with the whole thing. Even at ten years old I could smell the manipulation; I knew I was being used as a pawn.

Tammy, who was now on the phone talking about dialysis machines and end-stage renal disease, picked up the phone that day. My mom had told me about her years ago through jealous, hurt filled words, “She can’t have kids, that’s why Johnathan is with her. He never wanted any.”

I was ten that year and when he answered I gave a rehearsed, “Happy Father’s Day.” He asked who I was and my mother replied.

My memories get interrupted by the voice on the other line“-we’re just not sure how much longer he’s going to make it. And he’s been asking to see you Jenna.”
“I’m sorry, he wants to see me?” If he wanted to see me so bad, why hadn’t he? Was his impending death the only reason he would want to? Obviously, everyone tries to make amends in the end.

My half-sister had already been there, Tammy rambled on. Of course she had, he still talked to her. Some part of him had always wanted some part of her. I on the other hand wasn’t really wanted from the start. I told people I was a love child; never bothering to tell them my mom was the only one in love. He assumed because he was cheating on her that, naturally, she was too and that I wasn’t his from the very beginning. I was two when the paternity tests came back and he finally gave me the rights to his name. That was the only thing I had in common with Johnathan.

“I’ll try to make it up this weekend if I can.”

“I’m not sure if he’ll make it through the weekend, Jenna. It would be so good for him to see you. Really I would try to come tomorrow or the next day and bring some pictures? You know for the wake.” The words drop a pit in my stomach.

“You really think he’s not gonna make it through the weekend?”

“I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks. It’s okay though, busy schedule I understand, and we all know Johnathan’s no good in the communication department.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I hang up the phone and walk to the kitchen to pour myself a whiskey. Gray is filtering through the early evening sky as my hand shakes while I strike a match to light my cigarette. I let my mind wrap around the smoke surrounding my face and try to feel something for me. Johnathan was dying, is going to die. I can’t make the distinction between his death and our relationship now. I don’t know how to feel anything for him anymore.

I didn’t feel for him when I was younger, not until that day in the court room where I saw him and realized he didn’t want anything to do with me.That was the first time I felt hurt by his existence and his refusal to acknowledge mine. It was a few years after that we met for the first time. I was confused why after fifteen years he would all of a sudden decide to meet me. My mom cleared that up, “We agreed if he would just see you, he didn’t have to pay child support.”

When I did finally meet him, I pretended not to be bothered by his absence in my childhood. I tried not to ask him about the past because I was scared of his answers. Instead we would talk about my schoolwork mostly. Neither of us brought up the past on those bi-weekly lunch dates. We would stretch conversations paper thin and he would take me home.I got a card in the mail from him about once a month just to say ‘hi.’ If he missed picking me up one week, I would get an extra card and some cash. He didn’t really ask much of me, no intrusive questions like my mom, no prying around about boys or my friends, didn’t judge any decision I was making. He even admitted to me that he had no room to give me advice. I appreciated his honesty and distance.

I make my way through my first drink and hold the last sip in my mouth. I let the whiskey sit until the peppery notes numb my pallet and I swallow the warmth down. I go to my closet and pull out my photo albums.

I pour them on the ground and wave them out. I look through half the pile before I find a picture with both of us in it. We’re at my homecoming game. I try to ignore the mirror image our profiles create. I see myself in him and him in myself. Our Minnie Mouse noses tipped to the night air. I catch a hint of smile caught between our dark brown eyes. He drove four hours one way to come see me cheer that night. I forgot that I was actually happy to see him. That was the last trip he made before he couldn’t make the drive anymore because of his back problems.

His back problems eventually became a familiar excuse. He had lied to the courts when I was younger about his so called “disability” to avoid paying child support. My mom would spend hours driving around town with a disposable camera trying to catch him working for himself. From time to time she would get a blurry picture of him mowing lawns, nothing the courts would take over his doctor’s note though. It was on one of those trips I mistook him for my younger brother’s dad.

He strutted up to the window and talked up my mom. They laughed a bit and I looked out the window towards the setting sun. The sky transformed from pink to orange to star kissed dusk by the time we drove away. It was the court house all over again when I asked her why Aiden’s dad was over at the Scarberrie’s. She handed me a tissue and turned the radio up to muffle out my crying.

I stayed at Sabrina’s that night, one of those late night slumber parties after we were too old for dolls, but too young to drive.That night Heather found a way to cry about her dad for hours, which eventually became routine. He had left the year before and took a little piece of her heart with him. She blamed him for every mistake she was making in her life; why she loved Roberto even though he cheated on her with Becky Sanders, why she was flunking math, why she had an eating disorder. You could see the pity in our friend’s eyes; all their parents were still together. I never wanted that sort of sympathy, never wanted anyone to blame any one of my short comings on the lack of relationship I had with my father.

I went back to looking at the picture, lost in the dominance his features played in my face. I had searched for years for any trace of myself in my mother; it wasn’t there. A few months after the photo, when I turned eighteen and Johnathan was no longer legally financially responsible for me, he faded away. His transition out of my life was almost seamless. I was busy starting my freshman year of college and didn’t have time to talk to anyone. That’s where he saw the opportunity to drop me. I didn’t really notice his absence until the cards stopped coming. Just like that, things were back to the way they had been before I had met him.

My mom ran into him a couple years after he stopped talking to me and I guess he still remembered me. Remembered enough to agree with my mom that I was wasting my life not being a doctor or a lawyer, that’s what she said anyway.

I sat for an hour sifting through the photos. At the end of my search I found two photos of Johnathan and me and one of him and my mom. There were hundreds of memories surround at my feet. Half of them were friends and a handful were childhood photos I stole from my mom, but only three of them were of Johnathan. I grabbed the address Tammy had given me earlier and headed out the door.

I stopped at CVS and grabbed a sorry for your loss card. I stuck the photos and $75 inside before I dropped it in the mailbox.

The Cost of Stamps
by Austina Davis